HIGHLAND >> Automated toll units on three state Bridge Authority spans have met expectations that the $650,000 installation costs will be paid off in just over two years.

Spokesman John Bellucci during a telephone interview Tuesday said the system is saving $1,000 per day on the Kingston-Rhinecliff, Rip Van Winkle, and Bear Mountain bridges.

“We phased it in over the winter of 2013 into the summer and made [Kingston-Rhinecliff] really functional probably last fall,” he said. “We’ve been tweaking it all along with the dynamics of what it can handle and what it can’t in terms of traffic volumes. They all became fully functional ... the early part of this year.”

While the units cost only $38,000 each to install, there was more than $500,000 needed in software changes so drivers could pay either in cash or with credit cards.

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“One of the things that we had to teach the machine to do is calculate the tolls for different types of vehicles,” Bellucci said. “If you’re pulling a trailer ... it will actually know.”

Authority officials use the system during overnight hours when traffic volumes are between 300 and 400 vehicles on each bridge.

“Better than 60 percent of the traffic that goes through is using EZ Pass,” he said. “The machine will take EZ Pass but we’re also keeping the EZ Pass lane open.”

Bellucci said the system was instituted without any authority personnel losing their jobs.

“The other aspect that took a little while was we wanted to make sure that we could still communicate with people,” he said. “There is both a camera and basically an intercom system that connects to our 24/7 command center. So if somebody’s stopped and they can’t figure it out, their coin jammed or something like that, we can get a live person that can see them and usually tell what’s going on.”

The system also needed to be adapted to the driving habits of customers.

“We did a couple of weeks of live testing where we were literally standing in the roadway and talking with people as they went through in the middle of the night,” Bellucci said.

“We had some feedback from motorists very earlier about being able to reach the machine from inside a car window,” he said. “We actually pulled the machine further out toward the traffic but put in a post that would prevent vehicles from hitting it and damaging the machine. ... The base machine was actually designed for a fully automated car wash system and that turned out to be the prototype that had multi-functional software that we could adapt.”